Wikimedia site requests

Wikimedia site requests are requests to configure a Wikimedia project. This page gives an overview of the process for volunteers handling them, and other concerned parties from operations side.

Lifecycle of a request

A request generally follows this workflow:

1. The local project discuss the matter, in the manner the most appropriated for this project.
2. A task is filled on Phabricator, in the Wikimedia-Site-requests project. See meta:Requesting wiki configuration changes.
3. A volunteer writes a change to edit the relevant files in the operations/mediawiki-config repository.
4. The same volunteer - or if reluctant/absent/busy, another volunteer - schedules it for SWAT deployment on the Deployments page.
5. The change is merged and deployed.

Prioritisation

The requests are handled in a fast pace, using a one week cadence: we can deploy them twice per week between Monday and Thursday. There is no formal sprint.

Priority on Phabricator	Description
Unbreak now!	The change breaks normal production. You want a deployment right now or in the next hours. That also means you consider this task requests we set other requests aside.
High	The change is needed very soon, ideally in the next SWAT, or if not possible, this SWAT week (Monday-Thursday).
Normal	The change is helpful, we can do it this SWAT week or the next (so in max. 7-10 days). This is the priority assigned to most simple tasks.
Low	The change isn't needed before two weeks.
Lowest	The change can take as long as needed, or there is nothing actionable before a long time.